Bruce Thom was the chair of the National State of the Environment Council, a member of the esteemed Wentworth Group of Scientists and a long-time warrior for coastal protection. He wants to see determined and national action on the continent’s estuaries. The current woeful state of the Murray River Estuary is an extreme replication of [...]
Entries from November 26th, 2008
Estuary or Mess-tuary?
November 26th, 2008 · No Comments · Guest Viewpoint
Tags: climate change·estuaries·murray river mouth·water management·wentworth group
Throwing the Babies Out With the Bucket Water
November 24th, 2008 · 4 Comments · News
Pictures and Story by JAMES WOODFORD This week Tim Fletcher threw out 70,000 babies with the bucket water. Fletcher’s job with the Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority, partly funded by the NSW Environmental Trust, is to help rehabilitate the Snowy – the nation’s most famous river. In the past three weeks Authority staff, local landowners, [...]
Tags: australian bass·ferals·snowy river·southern rivers catchment management authority
Riverstalgia: How Coal Companies are stealing our rivers
November 21st, 2008 · 8 Comments · Guest Viewpoint
As BP Solar announced this week it was packing up the picnic and emigrating, we were reminded how much fun it is going to be now that we are alone with Nat King Coal. Not only does the coal industry pollute the atmosphere, it has a few good rivers on its conscience as well. Caroline Graham takes [...]
Tags: coal industry·pollution·rivers·water
Real Dirt, Fast – 19 November
November 19th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Real Dirt Fast
There’s news and there’s shipping news. The shipping news is the local stuff – strange comings and goings, unusual cargo and celebrities in odd places. Today Real Dirt, Fast begins with such a story. We have a lot of echidnas down here at Cudbugga Forest but normally they are on their way across the paddocks, heading directly [...]
Tags: echidnas·solar power
Rattus evictus: rodent eradication leads to new lease of life for island haven
November 15th, 2008 · 3 Comments · News
Story and Pictures by James Woodford See Stuart Cohen’s Flickr site - a fantastic collection of Brush Island photos from this week’s expedition After a night trying to sleep amidst thousands of feathered revellers, seabird scientist, Nicholas Carlile, says it is as if Brush Island has just survived a huge, impromptu party. Uninhabited by humans, the [...]
Missing history or emissions progress?
November 13th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Guest Viewpoint
Jeff Angel is the Director of the Total Environment Centre, a legend of the Australian conservation movement and author of Green is Good. We are at a crossroads, he writes: In the next month Australia will take some steps forwards on the journey to a low carbon economy or falter to a deadstop. In December the Rudd [...]
Tags: climate change·forests
Don’t Annoy Scarecrows: Tossed Food, Lost Water
November 12th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Guest Viewpoint
I bet you never thought of it like this…Dr Charlotte de Fraiture is based at the International Water Management Institute, a non-profit research institute with its headquarters in Sri Lanka…She wrote this small but important opinion while visiting the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University. It is estimated that around 40% [...]
Tags: agriculture·irrigation·waste
A Better Way of Burning? Climate Change, Bushfires, Indigenous Knowledge
November 10th, 2008 · 9 Comments · Guest Viewpoint, Uncategorized
Living with climate change is nothing new for Indigenous Australians, who survived tens of thousands of years in this continent with wild swings of dry, wet and sea levels many tens of metres lower than today. Clearly current fire management regimes are inadequate. But is there an alternative, asks ranger and landcare officer, Greg Watts? [...]
Tags: bushfires·hazard reduction burning·indigenous knowledge
SHOALHAVEN RIVER GETS A REST FROM SYDNEY’S WATER GREED
November 7th, 2008 · 4 Comments · News
Picture and story by James Woodford The pumping of water from the Shoalhaven River to top up Sydney’s supply is to be stopped for at least three years, signalling a further easing of the city’s water crisis. The NSW Water Minister, Phillip Costa, will announce today a moratorium on the massive transfers of water from [...]
Real Dirt, Fast – 6 November
November 6th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Real Dirt Fast
They say people often look like their pets and that scientists sometimes look like the creatures they study. Overlooking his unruly beard, Dr Duck, more formally known as Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of NSW, is no exception. Right now he is even behaving like a bird. Dr Duck is on a mass migration around the [...]
Tags: carbon guilt·climate change·moon·richard kingsford·waterbirds
